In preparation for a recent vacation in Turkey, I was poking around online, trolling for tips for the food-obsessed traveler. Eureka. A lavishly photographed food blog from Istanbul caught my eye, and the more I read, the wider my eyes got.

Cenk Sonmezsoy, the blog's 31-year-old creator, had spent five years in San Francisco after college, and his posts were laced with reminiscences of his food life in the city. In moments, the blogosphere had transformed the world into a ridiculously small place. After an exchange of e-mails, Sonmezsoy (pronounced sun-MASS-soy) agreed to meet me in Istanbul in early May and to prepare for me a Turkish meal that would reflect his California experience - a little taste of San Francisco on the Bosporus.

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"A food story involving me? That sounds surreal!" wrote the self-effacing Sonmezsoy in an early e-mail. In fact, his 2 1/2-year-old blog (cafefernando.com) has already built a following and garnered some critical acclaim. Recently, in what Sonmezsoy describes as his country's "Web Oscars," Cafe Fernando was voted the best blog in Turkey.

"San Francisco was a whole different world for me," recalls Sonmezsoy, an Istanbul native who moved here at the age of 21 to get a master of business administration at University of San Francisco. "I couldn't believe how many types of restaurants there were on one street."

By comparison, the Turkish food of his youth seemed like a book with chapters missing. Here, Sonmezsoy reveled in garlicky Italian fare in North Beach, dim sum at Ton Kiang and the "double-double animal style" burgers at In-N-Out Burger. When his parents came to visit, he took them to the Slanted Door - "my most favorite restaurant in the whole world" - for clay-pot chicken and Vietnamese coffee. San Francisco refined his palate, says Sonmezsoy, who now stocks his sleek Istanbul kitchen with foreign ingredients like Maldon salt and coconut milk.

Despite his enthusiasm for the city's multicultural table, Sonmezsoy's dining experiences here did not start on a high note. On one of his first days in San Francisco, the young student got hopelessly lost and wound up at a Burger King, frustrated and hungry. "For here or to go?" asked the counterperson after taking his order. Sonmeszoy, his English still rough, didn't understand the question but took a stab at an answer. "No," he replied.

"For here or to go?" repeated the counterperson. The flustered Sonmeszoy tried an alternative. "Yes," he ventured.

Bilingual baking

Today, his English is all but flawless and he composes his blog in both English and Turkish. Eighty percent of the posts revolve around baking and Sonmeszoy's dogged kitchen experiments. Usually riffing on published recipes, he adds artful touches of his own: a jaunty white chocolate and pistachio wafer garnishing chocolate cupcakes; a raspberry cream filling in swan-shaped chocolate eclairs.

Sonmezsoy's subjects are often homespun - bread pudding, muffins, granola bars - but his results are elegant. In his most-read post, he offers his recipe for the ultimate brownie, a tantalizing creation dripping with chocolate glaze and bejeweled with pistachios.

With help from Reinhart's book, "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" (Ten Speed Press), he even tackled and mastered bagels in hopes of duplicating his ritual San Francisco breakfast: the toasted bagel with cream cheese and tomatoes at Caffe Sapore, at the foot of Lombard Street. Unfortunately, reports Sonmezsoy, Istanbul lacks Philadelphia cream cheese.

After graduating from the University of San Francisco, Sonmezsoy got a job with a public relations firm in North Beach, writing press releases for high-tech companies - "clients whose technology I couldn't even pronounce," he says. He moved from Geary Street to a studio apartment on Chestnut Street and took up in-line skating in the Marina.

"I wouldn't miss San Francisco this much if I hadn't lived on Chestnut Street," he says. "There is no place to Rollerblade in Istanbul."

International acclaim

In 2003, after five years in San Francisco, Sonmezsoy decided it was time to leave. "I always wanted to study abroad," says the blogger, but "I always knew I would come back to Turkey." He now works with his older brother and father at the family's boutique ad agency, a job that doesn't interest him nearly as much as the food writing and photography he does for his blog.

The response to the blog has astonished everyone in the family, most of all Sonmezsoy. "My parents thought I was wasting my time," he admits. But when the blog got a mention in Turkey's biggest newspaper, his brother bought him a fancy camera.

Another mention, in a New York Times travel story on Istanbul, got his father's attention. Recently, pastry expert Nick Malgieri did a story on baking blogs for the Washington Post and listed Cafe Fernando. Sonmezsoy says his hands were shaking when he read the e-mail from Malgieri asking for his brownie recipe. When Sonmezsoy wrote a piece on a cookie he had adapted from a Dorie Greenspan recipe, made with a Buddha-shaped mold from San Francisco's Chinatown, Greenspan herself posted a compliment. "I couldn't sleep that night," says the star-struck Sonmezsoy.

Chinese, Indian inspirations

For his San Francisco-influenced Turkish menu, the young blogger found inspiration in some of his favorite food memories. The spring rolls at Ton Kiang reminded him of cigarette borek, finger-size fried savory pastries made with the thin, floppy, lavash-like flatbread known as yufka. He filled one version with feta and dill, another with pastirma (spicy air-dried beef) and a Jack-like cheese.

With mung beans, a legume he first encountered in Bay Area Chinese and Indian restaurants, he made a Turkish salad typically prepared with white beans.

Initially, Sonmezsoy proposed making a variation of Slanted Door's caramel-sweetened clay-pot chicken, using chickpeas and green peppers from his father's garden. But the concept failed in translation. "Chicken with sugar will never be a Turkish recipe," muttered Sonmezsoy when I asked why he had dropped the dish.

In its place, he made karniyarik - "split bellies" - a Turkish stuffed-eggplant preparation named for the manner in which the eggplant are pried open and filled, like a plump baked potato. It is, Sonmezsoy says, his favorite dish in the whole Turkish repertoire; predictably, nobody makes it as well as his mother.

Bulgur pilaf has little to do with Sonmezsoy's San Francisco days, but it typically accompanies karniyarik, so it made the menu. For dessert, he turned to a classic finale at Istanbul's kebab shops: a scoop of ice cream encased in warm semolina halvah, a Turkish sweet traditionally made with semolina, pistachios and milk.

Yet Sonmezsoy introduced a twist. He served the ice cream and halvah separately and made the halvah with sweetened condensed milk, an item virtually unknown in Turkey but familiar to him from the Slanted Door's Vietnamese coffee. Despite living in a country famous for its coffee, Sonmezsoy still makes the Vietnamese version on occasion with cans of condensed milk scored at a cake-decorating shop in Istanbul.

San Francisco souvenirs

Sonmezsoy writes and photographs his blog in a spacious, stylish apartment in Istanbul's Ulus neighborhood. A large image of the Golden Gate Bridge complements the contemporary furnishings in his living room, and a whimsical map of San Francisco hangs in the bathroom. With its pumpkin-orange Kitchen-Aid mixer and orderly rows of spices and water bottles, Sonmezsoy's tidy kitchen looks like it was propped by Martha Stewart herself.

"My mom ate a lot of food last week," confessed the blogger, who wanted to make sure every dish passed muster with her before he served them to me. He need not have worried. After five hours of chopping, simmering, frying and photographing, Sonmezsoy brought a feast to the table.

In the end, the menu's California accent was less pronounced than I might have hoped, but he clearly remains smitten with the state. When he returns, says the blogger, one of his destinations will be Big Sur, for Nepenthe's famed steamed artichoke with balsamic vinaigrette

Recipes and ingredient resources F6

Where to find Turkish ingredients

Yufka (Turkish flatbread) and biber salcasi (Turkish hot red pepper paste), as well as other ingredients, are generally available at the following places:

Feta-Stuffed Cigarette Pastry (Sigara Borek)

Makes 12 boreks -- Serves 4-6

Yufka is a thin, round, floppy Turkish flatbread made with only flour, water and salt. It resembles a giant flour tortilla. Some stores sell the whole rounds, which can be cut into 12 triangles. Others sell packaged yufka already cut into triangles for use in boreks such as this one. If you purchase frozen packaged yufka, thaw it slowly in the refrigerator. The round sheets are fragile and may break as you remove and unfold them. If so, you will need to use more than 1 sheet to get 12 triangles.

4 ounces feta cheese

2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

12 triangles of yufka (Turkish flatbread, see "Where to find Turkish ingredients"), about 5 inches at the base

-- Canola oil for frying

Instructions: In a bowl, combine feta and dill and mash with a fork. Place 1 triangle of yufka on a work surface and put a small spoonful of feta at the wider end, opposite the tip. With your fingers, spread the feta into a loose log about 1/2-inch wide, stopping well short of the yufka edges. Fold in the sides of the yufka, then roll like a cigarette. Moisten the pointed tip of the yufka with water and press to seal and secure the filling. Be sure the cheese is completely enclosed or it will leak during frying.

Heat 3 inches of canola oil in a pot to 375°. Fry the boreks in batches until golden brown, about 3-4 minutes. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Serve warm.

Split Bellies of Baked Stuffed Eggplant (Karniyarik)

8 small Italian black-skinned eggplants, about 4 ounces each and 1 1/2 inches in diameter

-- Vegetable oil for frying

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced lengthwise

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

1/2 pound ground beef or lamb

2 medium tomatoes

3 teaspoons tomato paste

-- Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 long fresh green chile, such as Anaheim

1/2 cup boiling water

Instructions: With a vegetable peeler, remove three lengthwise, evenly spaced strips of skin from each eggplant to create a striped effect. Put the eggplants in a large bowl of salted water. Invert a plate over the eggplants to keep them submerged, then set aside for 30 minutes to remove any bitterness. Drain and dry well with paper towels.

Heat 2 inches of vegetable oil in a heavy pot over moderately high heat. When the oil reaches 350°, fry the eggplants in batches until they are a rich golden-brown, 3-4 minutes, turning them with tongs so they brown evenly. Transfer them to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. When cool, arrange the eggplants side by side in a baking dish large enough to hold them without crowding.

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a skillet over moderate heat. Add the garlic and cook until lightly and evenly browned. Add the onion and saute until softened and starting to color, about 5 minutes.

In a separate 10-inch skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil over moderately high heat. Add the ground meat and cook, breaking it up with a fork, until it is crusty and no longer pink.

Add the onions and garlic to the meat. Halve one of the tomatoes horizontally and remove the seeds. Using the large holes of a box grater, grate the tomato halves over the meat so that only the skin remains in your hand. Discard the skin. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of the tomato paste and cook the meat mixture, stirring, over moderate heat until the tomato juices evaporate. Season with salt and pepper.

With 2 spoons, slit each whole eggplant down the middle to make pockets, leaving the tops and bottoms attached. Season the pockets with salt, then stuff them with the ground meat mixture, dividing it evenly.

Slice the remaining tomato thinly. Halve the chile lengthwise and remove the seeds and ribs, then quarter each half to make 8 chile strips. Arrange a chile strip on top of each stuffed eggplant, then top with a slice of tomato.

Whisk together boiling water and the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons tomato paste. Spoon a little over the eggplants to moisten them and pour the rest around them. Bake until the peppers have softened and the liquid in the pan has reduced to syrupy juices, 30-40 minutes. Serve warm, not hot.

1 small Anaheim chile, halved lengthwise, seeded, then thinly sliced crosswise (use less if very hot)

Instructions: Put the bulgur in a sieve and rinse under cold running water until the water runs clear. Set aside to drain.

In a deep skillet or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and butter over moderate heat until the butter melts. Add the onion and saute until it begins to color, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and pepper paste and saute another 6-8 minutes.

Add the diced tomato, mint, red pepper flakes, sumac and salt. Cook, stirring, until the tomatoes soften, about 5 minutes. Add the bulgur and stir until it is coated with the seasonings and hot throughout. Add the boiling water, stir gently, cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook until the liquid has been absorbed and the bulgur is tender, about 25 minutes. Remove from heat and gently stir in the sliced green pepper with a fork. Place a double thickness of paper towels on the surface of the pilaf. Cover with the lid and set aside to steam for 15 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Note: Sumac, a purplish-red spice with a sour taste, is available on spice shelves in well-stocked markets and at Middle Eastern markets.

Instructions: Soak the mung beans overnight in cold water to cover. Drain and rinse. Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the soaked mung beans and return to a boil. Cook 2 minutes, skimming any foam, then drain. Repeat the process with fresh water, but boil the beans until just tender, 8-10 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water. Set aside in a colander until dry.

In a large bowl, combine the mung beans, scallions, mint, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and salt. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Transfer the salad to a serving bowl and garnish with egg wedges and olives. Serve immediately.